Abstract
Orientation: The psychological empowerment of employees might affect their engagement. However, psychological empowerment and employee engagement might also be influenced by job insecurity.Research purposes: The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between psychological empowerment, job insecurity and employee engagement.Motivation for the study: Employee engagement results in positive individual and organisational outcomes and research information about the antecedents will provide valuable information for the purposes of diagnosis and intervention.Research design, approach and method: A correlational design was used. Survey design was conducted among 442 employees in a government and a manufacturing organisation. The measuring instruments included the Psychological Empowerment Questionnaire, the Job Insecurity Inventory, and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale.Main findings: Statistically significant relationships were found between psychological empowerment, job insecurity and employee engagement. A multivariate analysis of variance showed that affective job insecurity had a main effect on three dimensions of psychological empowerment (viz. competence, meaning and impact) and on employee engagement. Affective job insecurity moderated the effect of psychological empowerment on employee engagement.Practical implications: The implication of the results is that interventions that focus on the psychological empowerment of employees (viz. meaningfulness, competence, self-determination and impact) will contribute to the engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption) of employees. If job insecurity is high, it is crucial to attend to the psychological empowerment of employees.Contribution: This study contributes to knowledge about the conditions that precede employee engagement, and shows that the dimensions of psychological empowerment (namely experienced meaningfulness, competence, impact and self-determination) play an important role in this regard.
Highlights
Tremendous pressure is put on organisations to improve their performance and increase their competitiveness in the continuously changing world of work (Ndlovu & Parumasur, 2005)
The sub-scales of psychological empowerment were statistically significantly related to employee engagement
The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between psychological empowerment, job insecurity and employee engagement
Summary
Tremendous pressure is put on organisations to improve their performance and increase their competitiveness in the continuously changing world of work (Ndlovu & Parumasur, 2005). Employee engagement (May, Gilson & Harter, 2004) and psychological empowerment (Spreitzer, 1995) are important concepts to consider when dealing with changes at work and improving performance. According to Spreitzer (1995), psychological empowerment refers to an individual’s experience of intrinsic motivation that is based on cognitions about himself or herself in relation to his or her work role. These cognitions are related to the psychological states identified by Hackman and Oldham (1980) and Kahn (1990) that impact on the intrinsic motivation of employees. Engaged employees have a sense of energetic and effective connection with their work activities and see themselves as able to deal completely with the demands of their jobs (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzáles-Romá & Bakker, 2002)
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